Survey Says: Electric Bikes Enable More People to Ride Bikes, More Often!

The results are in from a recent electric bike survey: 55% of those surveyed had ridden a traditional bike weekly or daily. That jumped to 93% after they bought an e-bike!

6% of those surveyed had not ridden a bike as an adult. With an electric bike, 89% of those now ride daily or weekly!

Those are just a few of the stats from an e-bike survey that was directed by John MacArthur, Sustainable Transportation Program Manager at the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium (OTREC). John is also a research associate at Portland State University (PSU).

John MacArthur from OTREC & PSU

Mr. MacArthur recently presented the survey results and some general e-bike education in a webinar called ” E-Bikes: Generating the New Wave of Cyclists”. The webinar was presented to the Initiative for Bicycle & Pedestrian Innovation (IBPI) group that OTREC & PSU promotes.

From these results it is evident that more people are riding bikes more often with electric assist.

And here are some other interesting stats from the survey:

35% don’t avoid hills on their electric bike and 31% take a more direct or higher traffic route. 30% say they take a lower traffic or less direct route.

73% ride to different destinations on their e-bikes than they did on a standard bike.

Here are some of the comments from the survey participants on how an electric bike has helped them:

“To replace 95% of car trips and make commuting fun”

“To encourage me to ride longer distances and be able to keep up with family & friends who were more fit”

“I use the e-bike primarily as a substitute for the car where I would have otherwise have driven a car. I can carry my son and a week’s worth of groceries.”

“I have bad knees( I’m retired, 68 years old). If I pedal a bike my range is limited by pain to about 5 to 6 miles. The e-bikes has a range per charge of 30 to 35 miles.”

And here is the video version of the webinar with John MacArthur presenting:

Mr. MacArthur’s research does not stop here. “Drive Oregon and Kaiser Permanente Northwest have developed a program to give e-bikes to Kaiser employees at three Portland region campuses for trial use. The program’s primary goal is to test user acceptance of electric-assist folding bicycles (IZIP E3 Compact) as a first/last mile commuting solution and be able to communicate positive stories to a broad range of workplaces to help reduce single occupancy vehicle (SOV) use.”